Magic Buckets Focus Power

Enjoying Magic Buckets, but a query…

My workout for today was High Intensity with Focus ‘Pure Pursuiter’.

I looked up Pursuiter as 3-min power which for me is ~390W.

Magic Buckets wanted intervals @ 500W?

Not sure I follow why the target power was so different to the number I’ve taken off my power curve. What am I missing?

In order to end up a Focus on 3:00 minute when doing your 3-min power your rest intervals must be at 0 W until HIE is filled up again. If your rest intervals are at LTP or so, your focus duration will increase. To rectifate this, you can use a higher power.

That being said, I do not think Magic Bucket uses the focus at all, but use the remaining Xhss, Xpss, and Xlss targets to give you interval tagets. So the power target will be based on the ratio between the remaining Xhss and Xpss. If you have run out of Xhss your target will be MPA. If you have run out of Xpss it will be just over TP.


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I had a Pure Pursuiter forecast recommendation today as well… I was a bit nervous as we didn’t have any workouts in the library that were suitable for my XSS targets. Loaded up Magic Buckets and away I went!

I had 24.8 High XSS recommended, so I had in mind that I wanted to split the ride into 3 “chunks” of ~8 High XSS each. I found a good gear & cadence for the ON efforts & had an easy noodle for the recoveries. At the start of each section, I tried to push my CL up by 2 whole levels, then recover 1 CL & repeat until I got to CL 6, where I did most of my intervals.

Once I got to ~8.5 High XSS, I took my first break. Rather than let my CL regress all the way to lvl 0, I started my next set once CL dropped to lvl 1. I did my second set a bit harder at CL 7 and took my next break once I had achieved ~16 High XSS. Same recovery strategy as before, noodled until CL dropped to 1.0 and then started my final “set”, which I did at CL 6, for the most part.

Pro-tip, if you save the file from Garmin, you can even see your Target Power change over the course of your ride! Notice as my High Bucket filled before my Peak, that my power target moved up, trying to balance my remaining XSS. I just left it go and finished my ride with some all-out sprints until my Peak Bucket was topped up!

I ended up with a green check for today’s forecast and in the end, it wasn’t too bad:

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How were you able to gauge you were hitting your prescribed focus of Pure Pursuiter

I filled my buckets :slight_smile: The ratios of Low:High:Peak are what determine Focus & Specificity. As long as you fill the buckets, you achieve the needed training for the day!

And I did this without having to choose a workout! Neat, huh? :smile:

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Yes, but still trying to wrap my head around this. So you’d have to fill them precisely, right, not over fill, in order to hit the prescribed specificity?

For simplicity, yes. Just fill the buckets!

For more, here’s what I had to say on our FB page:

The ratio of Peak:Low XSS determines the Focus of the training. More peak:low XSS translates to a lower focus duration (no peak XSS = endurance, then progresses from Sprint TT, Climber, GC Specialist, Rouleur, Breakaway Specialist, Puncheur, Pursuiter, & Road Sprinter.

The ratio of High:Low determines the Specificity of the training. The more high:low XSS translates to a greater specificity. No high XSS = Pure Endurance, but then adding in more high XSS at the same focus increases specificity from Polar —> Mixed —> Pure).

To help visualize this, here’s 2 workouts that both have a Focus of ~5 min and approximately 100 total XSS. The major difference between these two is specificity.


The first (Polar specificity) workout has only 2.8 High XSS while the second (Pure specificity) has 17.5 High XSS - for my signature.

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